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Acknowledgement
As if Readers didn't know your ideas came from somewhere else! This term refers to the linguistic head-nods toward other *writers* and *scholars* from whom one has appropriated some idea. More recently, such acknowledgments seem to be just plopped here and there to impress people with all of the sources which have been consulted, when actually, these sources are made up (as in ghost sources/non-existent sources), or they haven't been consulted in the first place even if they do exist, while the one or two sources which have been extensively incorporated into the *new* text are carefully omitted--unless the *writer* includes them as references in order to be able to claim, "I didn't plagiarize! See, I've even cited the source. Why would I acknowledge the source if I were trying to get away with something?".
Anti-Plagiarism
An extremist, intolerant, fanatical and particularly radical point of view which pre-supposes that plagiarism is something one ought naturally to be against. With some degree of effectiveness, Anti-Plagiarists have devised means of discovering plagiarists and uncovering their plagiaries. For example, Anti-Plagiarists have devised paper databases of their own, and Internet search engines capable of comparing texts with each other for purposes of ascertaining their originality. This extremist and radical development is an extremely dangerous one, and as such, ought to be curtailed by any institutions or organizations interested in promoting tolerance and diversity. Would the world really be a better place if the goals of the Anti-Plagiarists were achieved?
Appropriate
Used as a verb, this word refers to the taking or using of previously existing text by a member of the Authorless Discourse system. It is sometimes used by Anti-Plagiarists in a negative sort of way, as if words and text are something which should not be taken and used by just anyone.
Author, The
A now out-moded term which used to refer to a person who writes, creates, or begins anything, particularly a creator of "new" texts. Having been sentenced to death and relegated to obscurity by the Authorless Discourse construct, the Author has been effectively silenced. Pending some sort of Resurrection, plagiarists are free to help themselves as they please to any possessions formerly belonging to the Author.
Authorless Discourse (also known as Autonomous Discourse)
This term refers to a system of autonomous communication in which no such thing as an Author can be presumed to exist. The conversation and discussions occurring on whatever subject are now free to occur minus the irritating presence of someone as knowledgeable, creative, and originative as an Author. Discourse is now autonomous, incapable of being either destroyed or created, and interchangeable into different genres and registers through human or computer-mediated translation and modification.
Bloodthirsty
An unfortunate choice of words used by members of the Anti-Plagiarist camp to describe a plagiarist. This adjective is used as if the Plagiarist would like to kill the Author, as if the Plagiarist were a textual vampire seeking to survive by nourishing himself on the blood of the Author. In fact, the Plagiarist is not as murderous as the Anti-Plagiarists would have one believe. The death of the Author is merely a foregone conclusion, so what is wrong with helping things along a bit? Or helping oneself to the former possessions of one presumed to be dead anyhow?
Borrow
A verb meaning to make legitimate use of text existing within an Authorless Discourse system. For a Plagiarist, this is one of the useful things about text--no one really owns text anyway, and this makes it free for others to take and make use of according to their current discoursal interaction needs.
Citation
Going right along with acknowledgement, a citation refers to the actual bit of text which refers to a work supposedly consulted. But as already mentioned, such sources might not even exist, and they might be listed merely as a tool or convention to increase the influence and air of scholarship surrounding a text, or less common, to give Readers the specific information needed to look up other texts on a similar topic from which the current writer has likely borrowed a lot of phrases, paragraphs, and generally good ideas, not necessarily with the arbitrarily applied system of quotation marks being employed to indicate verbatim copying.
Collaborator
In Hitler's Nazi Germany and occupied countries during WWII, a collaborator cooperated with the enemy in helping to defeat members of the Resistance. The use of this term by Anti-Plagiarists to describe someone who appears to condone or otherwise approve of plagiarism is an inaccurate collocation of terminology. A collaborator is really someone who simply helps to facilitate the textual exchanges within Authorless systems of discourse. We are all collaborators, in effect. Participants in the exchange of information and discourse which we ourselves have not originated. Collaborators today are only trying to protect Plagiarists from unjust accusations. Plagiarists really aren't plagiarists at all! They are just operating according to the rules of another discourse system, an Authorless Discourse system, to be more precise. The Author is dead. Ownership of text/discourse is no longer possible, and, therefore, Collaborators and Plagiarists are free to cooperate in lifting whatever they please from the possessions previously belonging to other people.
Copy
Copy--what an apropos word to describe the chunks of text which editors and other text managers use to describe the "filler" needed for newspapers, books, brochures, advertisements, and so on. As a noun, this word simply means "text" or "filler", as in a Plagiarist-in-Chief's question for a junior member of a newspaper's editorial staff, "How's the copy coming along for that article?"
Copying
Reproduction of previously existing text (s). This is one of the most useful text production strategies ever developed. Whether manual or automatic, handwritten hardcopy or digital cut-n-paste, copying of text greatly speeds up the discoursal interchanges of today. Nothing new can be written which has not already been written previously. The text has existed, and will always exist within the Authorless Discourse system. The most that any one copyist can do is to copy something which has already been expressed through text. Today most text is reproduced digitally from computer servers and online databases. Documents can thus be generated spontaneously and nearly instantaneously with a few strokes on the keyboard and fewer still movements and clicks of the mouse.
Copyright
This is one of those problematic concepts developed in the times before Authorless Discourse. It is a concept which has been legally codified so as to protect the "rights" of a now dead Author. In the period after the Author's demise, it now seems sensible to do away with such an out-of-date concept. Dead individuals really do not need anyone to protect their rights since they no longer exist, and legally have no recourse even if their rights have been infringed.
Cut-n-Paste
A plagiaristic technique made possible through computer mediated communication and the advent of the Internet. This technique involves highlighting text to be copied from a website or other digital version of a document, right-clicking and selecting "copy", and then right-clicking the mouse again to paste the digital verbiage in the destination chosen by the Plagiarist.
Cryptomnesia
An unconscious, unintentional phenomenon of influence in which a discourse participant remains unaware of such influence and believes the thoughts, the tunes of a song, the very words of a text, to be original when they are actually emanating from deep within the subconsciousness of that individual. This type of subconscious influence is another way in which texts are facilitated and exchanged, having no real Author--even if someone claims to have authored or originated these texts.
Death
Mortality of the Author. A wonderful term when used to refer to the "Death of the Author". The Author has died, ceasing to exist within the Authorless Discourse systems of today. However, in an alarming turn of events, Anti-Plagiarists have outrageously suggested that a Plagiarist might also be subject to mortality, something which appears to be completely indefensible, akin to sacreligiousness if one considers the tenets of Anti-Authorialism in a quasi-religious sense. Such heretics should be immediately excommunicated from all Authorless Discourse systems, and their Imprimatur to publish and communicate should be permanently revoked. No honorable member of the Authorless Discourse system would even think of consorting with heretics believing in Death of the Plagiarist ideology, the obverse of Anti-Authorialism. The Author is dead, and will never resurrect. Any belief to the contrary undermines the very existence of Plagiarists and their Authorless Discourse systems (See "The Death of a Plagiarist").
Derivation
Derivation refers to the process by which text is taken from some other source. In its adjective form, a derivative text means simply a form of communication which in un-original, taking its form and content from a pre-existing text. In the verb form, to derive, the action involved is described, an action employed by many of the eminent Plagiarists today in diverse fields such as journalism, theology, history, entertainment, literature, and other disciplines within academia.
Detection
Discovery--no big surprise here--that a text resembles another text in form, wording, structure, and so on. Such resemblance might be a very close one, as in a verbatim replication of another text's very words, or it might be a more general resemblance resulting from an appropriation of the general structure and gist of another text. So what if this is *detected*? It happens all the time, and discoursality is just a fact of the modern Autonomous Discourse System. What is harder to explain is how the detection agencies of the Anti-Plagiarists have been able to generate mega-millions through their detection services. Perhaps this is just an anomaly.
Discoursality
The obverse of originality, discoursality refers to those admirable qualities of a text resulting from the un-original manner and modes which have resulted in a given permutation of textual discourse. Rather than valuing originality, Readers now esteem discoursality, which might be seen as the degree to which a text conforms to previously existing discourse patterns and conventions. Universities now churn out degrees by the thousands based on their students' exhibitions of discoursality, where formerly such academic qualifications were awarded based on originality. The Death of the Author changed all of that. Discoursality, that's the ticket!
Discourse
A mode of communication and discussion in which interlocuters participate by appropriating and mimicking the utterances of others. Everything said within any discourse systems has already been said before in one way or another. Nothing new ever originates within the discourse systems existing today, particularly within certain disciplines of study within academia.
Discourse Community
There are as many discourse communities as there are disciplines of studies and subjects of interest to Readers. A Discourse Community comprises those groups of readers who share similar interests and possess similar appetites for pre- and re-packaged chunks of discourse. In public, Readers from within these communities eagerly smack their lips and gobble up the discourse as if it were ambrosia, while behind closed doors they vomit it up into the waste bins of the Authorless Discourse system. From these bins, the discourse is regularly recycled by Plagiarists who laugh at how easy of a time they've had in foisting their unpalatable discourse off on members of the various Discourse Communities.
Download
Another skillful technique which is absolutely necessary to be possessed by a successful Plagiarist in the Age of the Internet. Previously, a Plagiarist would often have to resort to laborious copying techniques, pasting together chunks of text from books, or perhaps borrowing papers from the files of a fraternity or sorority house. With the Internet, a few clicks of the mouse now enable the skillful Plagiarist to obtain a copy of any one of millions of texts available in paper databases existing solely to facilitate communication within Authorless Discourse systems.
Analogous to a "drive by shooting", the reporter/journalist drives quickly by the scene of a major news event, or touches down at an airport near the event, just to obtain a restaurant receipt and other evidence needed to justify the dateline and prove that he/she was actually there in order to be able to write the story covering the event. Stringers and part time assistants do the grunt work and actual reporting, and the big name journalist gets the byline.
Editor
In journalism, this term refers to the "Plagiarist-in-Chief", that person tasked with overseeing the plagiarism of his or her journalistic underlings.
Filler
The masses of textual verbiage which make up the bulk of most texts today. Filler is the material of which texts are made. Students put it in their papers. Researchers put it in their reports. Government agencies put it in their documents. Any text contains this most essential component in direct proportion to how much space is required to be filled, and also correlating to the level of importance to be ascribed to any given text or document. The more important a text/document, the more filler required. The more space required to be occupied by a text within the Authorless Discourse system, the more filler used.
Genre
The categories into which texts can be classified, primarily within literature, including such classifications as poetry, romance, thriller, detective, and so on. Within these different kinds and types of literature, text has been placed by discourse manipulators to communicate a message which is interpretable only by the Reader. Since an Author no longer exists and is incapable of encoding meaning within these genres of textual communication, the Reader is left to create the real message intended to be conveyed through such authorless discoursal interchanges.
History
A field of study noted for the many Plagiarists of high-standing and wide repute both in the popular market and within the academic community. Historians have really led the way in facilitating Authorless discoursal interchanges, exhibiting great skill in the use of Filler text, Synonym Substitution, and Minimal Paraphrase. Members of the various Discourse Communities can learn a great deal from the speed and efficiency with which historians generate their texts.
The state or quality of being honest in regard to one's textual and discoursal interchanges. The great thing about honesty these days is that everyone knows what's going on with regard to the appropriation of language. Such awareness makes un-necessary the sort of dishonesty and deceit which used to be resorted to in order to conceal one's true sources. Greater honesty in discoursal exchanges is one very beneficial result of an Authorless Discourse System.
With regard to plagiarism, an icon is a sacred image, a person who is so highly admired that charges of plagiarism--even if proven true beyond reasonable doubt--or any other such accusations, might be likened to religious blasphemy. The person who dares to question the integrity and honesty of an icon through such blasphemy will be castigated, excoriated, and excommunicated in order to protect the image of the icon.
Close to copying and mimesis, imitation involves replicating as closely as possible the structure, the wording, and other distinctive features of a text. An imitation may be so close to the original, that even an expert might not be able to discern any difference at all in the style of writing between the texts.
The degree to which one discourse facilitator or text is affected by another discourse facilitator or text. Every text is affected by other texts and the people who facilitate these texts, and this is what is meant by influence. Influence can be conscious or sub-conscious, resulting in both deliberate attempts to imitate or copy another work as well as unintentional mimesis.
Another of those out-moded concepts which blatently attacks the character of a Plagiarist. Collaborators, sympathizers, and the plagiarists whom they represent are capable of embracing the high ethical and moral standards which underpin such concepts. However, perhaps it is the constructs themselves which need re-examining and dissecting so as to re-invent our notions of *integrity*.
An extremely useful tool for the modern day Plagiarist, the Internet represents the ideals of the Authorless Discourse system. Texts are free for the taking, free to be downloaded, stored in Paper Mill databases, or exchanged through other modes of computer mediated discourse minus the irritating presence of any Author-ity figure. Anti-Plagiarists have begun to see the potential use of the Internet for plagiarism detection, yet this is still not a significant challenge so long as proper techniques for Synonym Substitution and Minimal Paraphrase are put into practice.
The digitally based discoursal system of interchange which transformed the way people exchange ideas, texts, images and other forms of information. In the 1990s this system grew at a rapid pace, and today it represents the main source of discourse for people to interact with, download, re-configure, and re-upload in the chat forums, message boards, text databases, and other digitized discourse repositories.
The textual relatedness of two or more texts resulting from their having been derived from a common source or from one text having influenced the other (s).
Most journalists are also Plagiarists, though not every Plagiarist is a journalist. Purveyors of "news" and information, journalists collate the fodder and filler for our newspapers, magazines, and cable news networks.
The body of texts comprising a particular discourse system's canonical and archetypal forms which are representative of the register of texts being circulated within that system.
An area of research and professional responsibility which has also come under the influence of the Authorless Discourse system. Instead of being concerned primarily with the health of their patients, practitioners of medicine are more concerned with facilitating textual and discoursal interchanges which will increase the figures in their bottom line. Such interchanges involve a lot of paperwork and plugging in of codes to represent longer chunks of discourse in order to facilitate diagnoses of patient ailments, and this efficiency in discoursal interchange has revolutionized the way in which the medical discourse community communicates with each other--doctors, patients, HMOs, Medicare, Government--all of this happening without any apparent need for oversight or central control.
The communicator rather than the originator of some message intended to be conveyed, not necessarily by anyone at all, since that would require an Author and ultimate textual originator. Within an Authorless Discourse System, the messages communicated by a Messenger seem to come from nowhere in particular, and they also seem to be designed for everyone in general, the generic Reader who represents the consumer of these generic messages drawn from the vast body of literature available to members of different discourse communities.
Like imitation, mimesis involving the miming and copying of previously existing forms of discourse. As a rhetorical strategy, mimesis is an efficient, effective, and cost-cutting mode of operation which to some degree is responsible for the success of the modern Research Services industry.
This is a technique involving minor changes to the wording of a text so as to make it appear unique and original to the gullible Readers of modern Discourse Communities. This technique also disguises the fact that derivation has occurred, and makes it nearly impossible for anyone to ascertain the ultimate source of a text, even with sophisticated search engines and powerful anti-plagiarism detection strategies.
The ceasing to exist of the Author. The Plagiarist maintains that he didn't do it, although he is on the record for having made statements which would seem to indicate approval of the Author's "disappearance". However, this is sheerly circumstantial evidence and in no way incriminates the Plagiarist in the "Death of the Author".
There is nothing new under the sun.
This is one of those developments made necessary in the "Research Services" industry due to the nefarious activities of the Anti-Plagiarists. The implication that plagiarism is something "wrong" is not an accurate one, and the term is used in its neutral sense of meaning text which is copied verbatim from another source. A No Plagiarism Guarantee is actually a very positive thing for students, an assurance that the paper which a student pays Research Services staff to write will not be flagged as "Plagiarism". To the contrary, the Research Services staff have employed their skillful techniques of Synonym Substitution and Minimal Paraphrase upon pre-existing database texts so as to thwart detection of matching language. Students and other customers are more than happy to reveal their credit card numbers once such "guarantees" are set in place.
a. (n.) A type of fictional prose text sold on the popular market which has likely been lifted from other novels in a cut-n-paste fashion.
b. (adj., now obsolete). New, innovative, original.
The degree to which a text exhibits creativity and a new way of arranging discourse outside of the formulaic compositions currently being exchanged and re-exchanged, recycled, and re-circulated. With the Death of the Author, originality gave way to discoursality (see definition of discoursality above).
A textual repository especially designed for college and university students. Consisting mainly of digitally archived texts, the paper databases of today are the descendants of hardcopy databases of the type which used to be maintained by college fraternities and sororities. Hardcopy now being obsolete thanks to the Internet Revolution, digital paper databases are now the order of the day. Whether purchased for download as a "sample" paper or as a sort of textual "plug-in" for a given assignment, Paper Databases are an integral component of discourse systems today, particularly academic and educational discoursal interchanges. These databases have made possible the discoursality which characterizes most texts today.
Very closely linked with Paper Databases, the Paper Mill Industry refers to that sector of the economy specializing in the production of texts for the educational, governmental, and other sectors of the global economy. A paper or document can be custom ordered, or the Paper Databases maintained by these industries can be browsed for the right text to fulfill a particular assignment. Custom-made papers and documents are not quite as custom as the title would imply. Skilled research services staff in this industry simply modify texts through synonym substitution, minimal paraphrase, and other text re-combination techniques in order to fulfill the custom order. Customers who don't have the time to do this on their own thus benefit from such labor-saving services. Since the Internet Revolution, the Paper Mill Industry has become a multi-million dollar industry with many spin-off benefits to other sectors of the economy (telemarketing, webpage hosting, credit card industry, colleges and universities, government intelligence, etc.)
A (French derived) term referring to the pasting together of former works and themes in a *new* composition. This cross-cultural example of text generation illustrates the global nature of the modern Autonomous Discourse System.
A pasticheur is one who uses Pastiche as a text generation technique. Among writers, who isn't a digital pasticheur these days? How did one compose before point-n-click, cut-n-paste?
The Plagiarazzi are those Author-murderers who have a very bad habit of ex-appropriating things which don't belong to them, at least so goes the argument of Anti-Plagiarists. The argument advanced by the Anti-Plagiarists associates the murderous intentions of the Plagiarazzi with the death of the Author, which Anti-Plagiarists believe to have been a pre-meditated homocide/murder. Such an association is backed up by only the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. There are no witnesses to the alleged murder. There is no crime scene evidence which would support such a claim, but the Anti-Plagiarists persist in accusing such notable proponents of Authorless Discourse as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault of basically conspiring/collaborating to assassinate the Author! Further, these Anti-Plagiarists also brand any Sympathizers and followers with a Plagiarazzi "mark" of sorts in the literature and propaganda that they produce. This "mark" consists of a gruesome looking "P" within the middle of a circular red and white background as follows:
The term Plagiarazzi itself is evidently a word of Italian or perhaps Latin origins, similar to paparazzi, literati, illuminati, technorati, spaghetti, and the like. It may also be a combination of two words:
Plagiary + Paparazzi = Plagiarazzi
The underpinnings of this term, the cultural complexity which it ignores, the history of borrowing, and the origins of this P-word itself, negate any attempt to arrive at a commonly agreed upon definition. Some people equate plagiarism with unfairness and stealing. Others try to explain it in terms of "kidnapping" another person's imaginative ideas. Still others suggest that in certain contexts, it is a perfectly acceptable composing strategy. It goes on all the time and is winked at and overlooked by most normal people, while a small minority frowns gravely upon the supposed dishonesty and lack of character which they believe to be responsible for plagiarism when it occurs. As a construct, plagiarism involves borrowing, derivation, appropriation, and perhaps copying of another person's ideas and the language used to express those ideas. Nearly all can agree on this mimetical aspect of plagiarism. What is harder to agree on are issues such as originality (whether any thought can truly be original), acknowledgement (the indication of an inspirational source), and the state of modern systems of discourse in which there is a high degree of textual similarity and inter-changeability. The general trend has been one toward redefining this troublesome concept, ameliorating its problematic connotations and implications, and substituting "plagiarism" with new terms and constructs such as are convenient and more appropriate for our (post) modern Autonomous Discourse System.
Some have unkindly suggested that a Plagiarist is--among other things--a thief, a deviant, a kidnapper, an Author-murderer, a language felon, a death-row convict. This is nothing but a misunderstanding of a plagiarist's real intentions. A Plagiarist is actually a language artist who makes skillful use of word arrangements left behind by the Author in today's Authorless Discourse system. If these word arrangements are perceived as being un-original, does this somehow lessen the impact of a Plagiarist wishing to communicate? As long as the Reader does not know, what does it matter anyway? In spite of all the negative press about plagiarists, they have feelings too and don't appreciate all of the accusations flying from the Anti-Plagiarist camp. See "What is a Plagiarist?" for further information on this question.
A specialist in plagiarology; one who studies plagiary and related forms of derivation, mimicry, fabrication, fraud, etc.
The study of plagiary. A new field of study (with reference to the modern plagiarism phenomenon) which results from an apparent increase in the various forms of plagiarism, derivation, mimicry, fabrication, fraud and related behaviors.
The greatest idea since words were invented, this license gives textual practitioners the freedom to do as they wish with other poets' works, no citation or acknowledgement required.
A curious species of human particularly susceptible to manipulation, to having words placed in their mouths by those doing the manipulating, and to taking credit for ideas about which they are clueless. This results in many more incidents of *stick foot in mouth* than are common among most average individuals, although research to verify such an apparent trend is continuously ongoing. Many politicians have been accused of plagiarizing, and derivation is actually quite a common tactic used by politicians in order to communicate with their followers. But more often than not, the speechwriters for these politicians are the ones responsible for the political discourse of the politician they happen to be *minding* at the moment. This is yet another illustration of the modes and manner of discourse which is shared and interchanged freely, without ultimate origin, for even speechwriters have got to find somewhere to lift the language used in constructing the persuasive rhetoric which they pass off on their unwitting politicians. Theirs is just one of the many strings being twanged, yanked, and sometimes jerked about in the process of controlling the marionette that is their politician. Handlers of politicians have truly got a difficult list of tasks before them, since any mistakes or sloppy control, if such is noticed, can result in a political brouhaha, another whatever-Gate to make for splashy headlines and an endless source of fodder for the talk shows.
Fiction books and other texts marketed to popular audiences in genres such as romance, western, detective, and other categories to interest the common reader. This is a cut-throat business, and the successful marketers of these popular audience targeted text have been known to imitate and even copy from each other as part of their general business strategy. Readers don't seem to mind, and will generally lap up whatever the latest fashion seems to be in whatever particular genre is selling well. A bit of scandal livens things up a bit and can actually be good for name recognition! A quick apology in a press release, a few tears shed for the camera, and things get back to normal until the next big scandal.
This is the uncomfortable feeling of constriction accompanying a difficult *writing* assignment. Such pressure is really not necessary for *writers* anymore as there are now more and more options available including various modes and methods of textual composition, research services, and paper databases. Cut-n-Paste is perhaps the most commonly used method to relieve the pressure of a difficult assignment, although research services use has also skyrocketed due to the uncomfortable presence of textual similarity detection software designed by those inherently contumacious members of the Anti-Plagiarist camp.
See Teacher entry below. A professor is a glorified form of teacher who, once having reached that state of academic nirvana known as tenure, is freed from the aggravations and toils of the more common teachers. Once having reached this state of academic nirvana, many professors discover the value of employing research assistants and ghostwriters to generate chunks of autonomous discourse for publication in obscure academic journals read by only one or two people, if by anyone at all. They also produce books now and then by patching together a hodge-podge collection of verbiage collated by these same research assistants and ghostwriters. A number of celebrity professors masquerade as Authors when really they might better be described as Master Plagiarists.
Thanks to the Author's having left the Discourse scene, the Reader has been able to emerge from relative obscurity into a position of great importance. Everyone is a Reader these days in one Discourse Community or another, a Reader being the consumer who receives and processes the texts and diversely packaged chunks of discourse and digital verbiage. Not quite as brilliant as the Reader of yesterday used to be, today's Reader doesn't have a clue that he is being sold a fake bill of goods. But it doesn't really matter as long as everyone in the Authorless Discourse system is happy. The Reader seldom realizes that there is no genuine discoursal interaction occurring, and although he is occasionally appalled at the state of modern discourse, he/she quickly looks over any discoursal deficiencies to eagerly consume newer and ever more attractively packaged bits of discoursal morsels, not realizing that the same morsels are on every other Reader's platter as well. Generic, blah, bland bits of text which anyone might have produced but which, in fact, no one has produced since they are products of an Authorless Discourse system.
A list of sources purposefully designed to impress the Reader with an overwhelming sense of awe and respect for unassailable scholarship. A skillful *writer* will exclude from the list the actual sources of the cut-n-paste scholarship so as to avoid disappointing the Reader when he/she discovers the exact similarity with other sources.
Different categories and contexts of language use. These diverse contexts require modification of the language in order to made a text fit in right within particular contexts. Take for example the register of "diplo-speak" or "UNspeak". A student who downloads a document written in this register and expects to turn it in for academic credit without modification just might get away with it. But normally, student language of the sort appearing in college papers is in a whole different Register or category of language use, Studentese, if you will. Properly re-wording a text to conform to studentese will more likely result in successful results than a text which is downloaded without making the appropriate modifications to conform to a different register. This process of textual modification illustrates the different ways in which texts can be adapted for use in new contexts, without changing the basic structure or message encoded in that text. Everything that can be said has already been said. All that is necessary is to find out what you want to say, and then look for language to borrow from those who have already said it before and modify it for use in a new register.
This is the kind of digital cut-n-paste, textual reformulation, and discoursal alteration offered for a fee by the Research Services industry. Everyone uses such Research Services these days, even the US and British Governments whose important white paper on Iraq's WMD capabilities seems to have been produced by Research Services staff. This sort of research entails Appropriation, Derivation, Minimal Paraphrase, and Synonym Substitution as the primary heuristic and composing tools, with tools of secondary importance being the mouse (right and left click buttons), the computer monitor, swivel chair, and an Internet connection along with subscriptions to some of the more notable paper databases on the Web, including both open and closed source literature.
A convenient alibi for researchers if charges of plagiarism ever arise. In addition to "sloppy note-taking" and "editor blunders", these individuals are yet another excuse to fall back on in the nasty business of assigning blame for textual /discoursal redundancy. Fewer and fewer people are worried these days about such textual/discoursal redundancy, but if the issue does come up, those pesky research assistants and their lack of proper training and oversight offer a way to dodge any serious consequences.
A valuable industry which has sprung up simultaneously with the Internet Revolution. A multi-billion dollar industry which employs countless numbers of discoursal re-arrangement experts, Research Services thrives on the engines of growth provided by the education and government sectors as well as other key areas of the economy. What did students and government officials do before Research Services came of age? How did they complete their projects and white papers on time? How did the CIA come up with actionable intelligence prior to the incorporation of Research Services companies. Research is ongoing to investigate these questions, and preliminary findings suggest that it is no coincidence that the demise of the Evil Empire coincides neatly with the beginnings of the Research Services industry. These significant events happened in the same decade, at the beginning of the 1990s.
The irritating presence of pro-Authorialists might be described as a Resistance movement against the dominant ideology of anti-Authorialism. This Resistance movement is a weak attempt to undermine the superior force of those behind the murder of the Author. This Resistance movement should fade away as the realization sets in that the Author is dead, and that he's not coming back again.
The "sly and spectral" return of the Author (Sean Burke, The Death and Return of the Author). This is an impossibility, a gimmick of the Anti-Plagiarists to mislead their gullible followers. No one, the Author included, has ever or could ever resume living after being killed, murdered, or otherwise put to death. What a silly notion . . . Barthes, Foucault and Derrida finished off the Author and put this notion to rest, didn't they ? ? ?
The art of re-combining other people's expressions in the process of Text Generation. These days, the fine art of rhetoric has been made infinitely more cost effective and laborless thanks to Internet Cut-n-Paste techniques developed by skilled rhetoricians.
A new religion whose Prophets today are susceptible to the same plagiaristic tendencies as former religious movements. Believing in themselves as infallible revelators, these bold Plagiarists employ forgery, scam-surveys, textual manipulation, and willing Research Assistants in the production of *new* scientific discourse. Re-packaged for re-consumption by Readers in the scientific as well as popular discourse communities, the valuable texts produced by the scientific community are revered as is appropriate for their sacred status.
See References, Acknowledgements, and Citation. Sources comprise those texts (digital, verbal, oral, etc.) which have been recombined, modified, and incorporated in the formation of a *new* text.
An oral text/chunk of Autonomous Discourse (which may well have a version existing in hardcopy format).
This person is responsible for finding chunks of discourse to plug into the empty spaces of a politician's mind. He or she is tasked with locating the appropriate language for the politician to repeat before an audience. Quite commonly these important members of a political action team will make use of discourse which has already been used in the political realm, perhaps by another politician in the same country, or perhaps from overseas. The widespread publicity of politician's utterances makes it necessary to search diligently for the right discourse to use, and this is often found in contexts somewhat removed from local contexts so as to locate text which can be re-circulated without Readers and Listeners feeling that the language is redundant. Redundancy is unavoidable in Authorless Discourse systems, but the actual perceptions of such redundancy must be avoided if a politician is to achieve success with his or her constituents.
One of the most important members of the Authorless Discourse systems within academia, students are also one of the primary consumers of the discourse and digital verbiage being exchanged via the Internet and the Research Services industry. Without students, the Research Services sector would immediately collapse. These individuals having the label of "student" today are not the same as students from previous generations. Today one is entitled to be a Student, entitled to good grades, entitled to entitlement, and all of the rights and privileges appertaining thereto, without having to undergo the formerly rigorous training, scholarly endeavor, and basic hard work to which students from previous generations were required submit. On college campuses today, the Student is typically characterized by Professors as being lazy, ill-mannered, rude, bored, and impatient unless undergoing a constant barrage of stimulation and entertainment. Further, the Student generally speaks with a slurred accent due to multiple tongue and lip piercings through which various metal adornments have been fastened to the body, he/she wears pajamas and flip-flops to class (when he/she actually comes to class), and he/she shuffles entitledly and aimlessly about campus as if the learning process were a great waste of his/her precious time. All of this is not to understate the Student's position of vital importance to the strategic discourse communities in which they are engaged--apparently entrapped it may seem in their perspective--toward the furtherance of knowledge and pursuit of mission statements on campuses across America and around the globe.
Similar to a collaborator, a sympathizer is an individual who deeply understands the complexity and cultural diversity of today's discoursal interchange systems. A sympathizer realizes that a Plagiarist might have many good reasons for engaging in textual appropriation, derivation, copying, and mimesis. Culture, tradition, context--these all help to explain the modern phenomena associated with discoursality, textuality, and the like. Ownership is no longer a valid concept with regard to text, and a sympathizer understands the difficult choices facing discoursal interchange participants today: "How can I best modify this text? In what contexts might this text be re-used? Where has this text been circulated before? What is the most cost-effective way to get good value exchanges for text? What is the competition doing to boost sales revenues in the Paper Mill Industry?" A sympathizer sympathizes with all of these choices, contexts, and characteristics complexifying the discourse scene today.
Similar to Minimal Paraphrase, this term describes the modification of text--word replacement in this case--which is successfully employed by Plagiarists, Students, and other Discourse manipulators in order to facilitate the discoursal interactions which characterize the Authorless Discourse system. Skillful use of Synonym Substitution helps such discourse manipulators to avoid detection by Anti-Plagiarists.
One of those sometimes gullible and frequently unfortunate individuals tasked with educating the extremely brilliant members of the younger members of educational discourse communities today. Many of these teachers have no idea how brilliant their students are, not realizing the extent to which they use discoursal interchange systems and paper databases to fulfill a difficult assignment. The role of *teacher* is gradually giving way to a role as *facilitator* of knowledge acquisition, namely, teaching students the nimble dexterity needed to point and click with a mouse in order to download chunks of knowledge in the form of texts and academic papers which are then exchanged for academic credit and qualifications.
A chunk of discourse. A component of the Autonomous Discourse Systems comprised of smaller discourse components (letters, words, and larger chunks of discourse).
The autonomous generation of text by means of computer. Advancements in technology have made possible Text Generation Engines which Jonathan Swift could only dream of when he satirized the Royal Society of London. Swift described a hypothetical machine/engine which recycled and recombined language chunks. Swift, who mocked "idiots" who could "quote Horace learned by rote", was through his fictional Academy of Lagado satire targeting the pseudo-scientists of his day without realizing that he was predicting the future of Autonomous Discourse. The scholars of Lagado were not turning out any new, creative, or original knowledge with their language recycling machine/engine, but rather they (and certain members of the Royal Society) were actually preventing the pursuit of knowledge through their counterfeit research publications. Modern forms of language machines/engines are capable of producing digitally recycled chunks of language on a scale unimaginable to the Royal Society of London scholars in Swift's day (See an example of this sort of paper produced by a computer program at http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/rooter.pdf).
A discipline of study which seems to be inherently susceptible to plagiarism, forgery, schystering, imitation, influence, and the like. Witness, as an example, the many religions, sects, and groups which have borrowed their doctrines and teachings from previously existing sacred texts and beliefs. Many of the most highly revered Theologians were actually Plagiarists in the sense of borrowing their ideas verbatim from others--Mohammed, Ellen White, Joseph Smith and many other "Prophets" simply cut-n-pasted their revelations, presented them to their followers, and succeeded due to their considerable skills as persuasive orators and rhetoricians.
Another of those unkind words used by Anti-Plagiarists to describe one who appropriates text within an Authorless Discourse system. As if words could "belong" to anyone in the first place!
Also known as a Cut-n-Paster, this person is responsible for appropriating the discourse needed to fulfill a text-based assignment. Whether a Student, a Journalist, a Webpage Developer, or other text-production-related employee, a Cut-n-Paster/Writer works hard to find the copy needed to fulfill his/her assignment. A good writer will also be adept in the skills of Minimal Paraphrase and Synonym Substitution, valuable skills which help to modify a text according to assignment specifics.
Writer's Block
Lack of access to the text from a discoursal interchange system caused in modern times by an Internet server temporarily going out of service or by some other Internet connection malfunction.
Disclaimer: All of the famous plagiarists featured in this webspace remain “alleged plagiarists”, the documented allegations having been made by others in the professional literature and/or the popular media. Further details relating to these allegations will be forthcoming in the book edition of Famous Plagiarists. Although Dr. Lesko is a professor at Saginaw Valley State University, the Famous Plagiarists Research Project represents the individual research of John P. Lesko, plagiarologist, and SVSU accepts no responsibility for the content of these pages. Comments or questions should be directed to
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